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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: JayM
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The man who had heard my telepathy seemed to ponder for a moment, then explained his situation.
To explain briefly, he said that his wife and son had been kidnapped and that he was following the orders of a criminal organization to save them.
…While also taking the blame.
I listened to his story about the kidnapping situation and his regrets while looking at the man pinned beneath me.
“Guuh….”
He was the guy who had been giving orders just moments ago to the man luring the Association employees and the police away.
Looking at the interior of the room he was in, I was able to find out one interesting fact.
[The suspect is currently fleeing in the direction of checkpoint 5! Requesting support!]
[Message received.]
First, as if they had hacked the police radio frequency, all the radio communications between the Association employees and the police were being transmitted to one of their radios, and….
[We’ve made it to the designated point, you know? You should start getting out too. And get that guy who acted as bait too.]
From another radio, a person presumed to be this guy’s comrade was saying such things.
So, this guy I had subdued had been eavesdropping on the police radio and had been guiding the criminals at the same time so that they don’t cross paths with the police.
“Good grief….”
It was sloppy.
The police’s operation was sloppy, and the criminals’ plan was sloppy too.
Of course, this didn’t mean that the police or the criminals were incompetent.
It would be more accurate to say that the police’s operation had been leaked, and that the criminals didn’t really need to make a detailed plan.
‘…There’s a mole inside the police.’
If I thought of it that way, I could roughly understand the situation.
No matter how airtight the police’s plan was, if a person in a position to tamper with the operation from the inside was a mole of the criminals, then breaching the encirclement wouldn’t be difficult.
I ruled out the possibility that there was a mole inside the Association.
Because thanks to the recent change of their executives, there might be figures who had ties with the guilds left in the Association, but there was no way that there would be people left who were openly colluding with criminals.
‘Still, for there to be a person colluding with criminals inside the police….’
In movies, there were cases where such people appeared, but this was reality.
If it were just a matter of taking a bribe and looking out for someone’s convenience, it might be different, but for a person of a rather high position to be openly colluding with criminals in reality?
This was… no small matter.
‘Though it’s none of my business.’
More than that, this guy pinned beneath me was a problem.
To be more precise, the technique that this guy had used was a problem.
“Hey, there’s something I want to ask you.”
“Guuuuh….”
He gritted his teeth and pretended to glare at me.
And at the same time….
[We’re in big troub—.]
[Where do you think you’re going?]
He attempted to inform his comrade of his situation.
Of course, he was immediately blocked by me.
Since I had accurately grasped the principle of the technique that this guy was using, it wasn’t difficult for me to interfere with it.
In the first place….
“To think you’d try to use telepathy in front of the person who created telepathy, you’ve got some nerve.”
What the guy had used was a technique commonly called telepathy.
“What…?”
“I have no intention of asking for the source. Just seeing the usage fees coming to me in real time, I have a rough idea.”
Among the numerous techniques I had stored in the database at the Awakener System’s request, telepathy was also included.
And since telepathy didn’t necessarily require internal energy and could be replaced with other types of energy like mana or psychic power, it was a technique that could be used even by those who weren’t martial artists like me and Yeon Mi-rae.
‘Of course, I didn’t store the telepathy I use in the database as it is.’
After all, telepathy could be misused in many ways.
So, I had stored only knowledge close to the basics of telepathy.
It was crude knowledge, to the extent that when telepathy was used, the people around could immediately perceive that telepathy was being used.
But the telepathy this guy used, perhaps because he had improved it in his own way, was quite stealthy.
“Even so, since it didn’t deviate much from the framework, it was immediately caught by my senses as its original creator.”
“Keuk…! Damn it…!”
He spat out a curse and glared at me.
Seeing that, I placed my foot on the head of the guy who had spat the curse.
“Now then, you should have a rough understanding of the situation….”
This guy wasn’t foolish.
He must have realized that there was a reason I was keeping him alive.
And he would also know that the only way for him to get out of here alive was to cooperate with me.
“I’ll be direct. The destination of your friends. Spill it.”
He would also know how to weigh the paltry loyalty among criminals against his own life.
“……”
Hearing my words, he smiled slightly.
And he let his mana flow into the floor.
“Die…!”
“Ah, for reference, if you were counting on the binding magic circle laid out in this room…”
“?!”
The magic circle hidden in the floor of the room activated, and chains made of mana shot out.
And those chains bound the criminal who had let his mana flow into the floor.
“I’d like you to know that changing the target of a magic circle isn’t that difficult for me.”
“A m-mage…?”
‘And one who can modify a magic circle made by someone else without anyone knowing…?’
“Of course.”
I kindly explained to shatter the guy’s hopes to pieces.
“In the first place, this binding magic circle is also a magic circle I created and registered in the database.”
“…!”
At my words, he made a despairing expression.
“By the way, to take someone else’s technique and use it for a crime like this… And not just one, but two. No…. Besides telepathy and the binding magic circle, you’re not borrowing any other techniques I registered, are you?”
“…D-don’t tell me… Are… are you an Archmage… sir?”
“An Archmage….”
I certainly did have sufficient knowledge of magic to qualify for the title.
Also, although the efficiency wasn’t great, I could at least imitate magic that only those called Archmages could use.
“But what’s so important about that? What’s important now is whether you talk about where your friends are going or not. That’s it. Right?
“I-I’m sorry!”
At my words, he said that, bowed his head, and began to speak.
“Well… Since there are also hostages, we couldn’t move our base that far from our original area… so we found a suitable abandoned building nearby and made that our new base. The location and address are…”
“……”
I quietly listened to what he was saying.
And….
“…Haaa….”
I let out a sigh.
At my sigh, the guy watched my expression.
“Is… is there a problem?”
“Yes… a problem. Did you think I wouldn’t be able to tell if you lied?”
“Keok?!”
“I’ve seen a lot of liars, you see. I can see through a lie like yours without much difficulty. And didn’t I tell you? What’s important is whether you talk about where your friends are going or not.”
Honestly, I was disappointed.
To think that the result of him weighing the paltry loyalty among criminals against his own life was to lie and protect that loyalty…
Well, that didn’t matter.
In the first place, it wasn’t a problem for me even if he didn’t spit out any information.
Because I….
“I just have to ask your brain directly.”
“What does that… Gyaaaaaah?!”
My hand grabbed his head.
And through my hand, my internal energy began to infiltrate his mind.
Unlike what I did with Yeon Mi-rae, my internal energy, which didn’t consider the wellbeing of the target this time, tore through his head and made him feel pain.
“So you were planning to leave Seoul, no… the metropolitan area, and move your base to the Gangwon-do area?”
“Stop… Stooop…!”
My internal energy imitated the psionic powers of psionicists who used psychometry or mind scan.
Of course, the effect was completely different.
Basically, the psychic power used for psychometry or mind scan could not, for the most part, harm the opponent, but my internal energy was different.
My ferocious internal energy focused solely on extracting information while giving the opponent pain.
Secretly extracting information was also possible if I paid a little attention, but was there a need to do so in this case?
This guy was a clear criminal.
And a criminal who had been confirmed to have held hostages and was planning to frame a person.
There was no need to be considerate here.
“And the mole in the police is… Well, well? You recruited someone of the police substation chief level? And you used this person to fabricate evidence and frame someone? How on earth…? Ah, you took a hostage from this person too.”
Well, it wasn’t my business to worry about this.
If he was a conscientious person, he would confess his own sins as soon as he learned that the hostage was safe, and even if not, it seemed like he had left quite a lot of traces, so it would be naturally revealed during the investigation.
My job wasn’t to mind all that, but the extermination of the criminals and the rescue of the hostages.
Just that.
Therefore, I focused on extracting information relevant to my task.
Their pre-planned movement route and means of transportation as well as the number of criminals guarding the hostages.
‘This should be enough.’
Having extracted a moderate amount of information, I took my hand off the guy’s head.
“…Uuuhhh….”
The guy, unable to overcome the pain from me rummaging through his brain, seemed to have gone mad and was drooling.
I casually threw him aside.
Crash!
The guy tumbled and collided with a bookshelf in a corner of the room, and from the impact, the bookshelf seemed to shake, and then the books poured out.
For reference, this was something I had intended.
And for good reason. Behind the bookshelf was a hidden safe containing the money and data that the guy had collected.
Later, when the police investigated this place, they would find the money and data while organizing the bookshelf.
Of course, I also planned to take measures to ensure that the police would come to this place.
KWAANG…!
I gathered the mana in the binding magic circle that was restraining the guy and made it explode.
The mana should have spread quite far with this room as the center, and if an Awakener felt that mana, they would think that something had happened in this place and would either report it or come here to check it out themselves.
This much was enough for what I wanted to do here.
“Now then….”
I decided to quickly get out of here before another Awakener came to this place.
I didn’t think that I would be spotted even if another Awakener came, but I had no reason to stay here for long either.
And the place I had to go now was….
‘…Found them.’
The place where the criminals who were moving with the hostages were.
As I thought that, a few vehicles were captured by my senses.
On the outside, they looked like ordinary cargo trucks, but they were trucks with many people riding in the cargo hold.
‘Hmm… It seems like time will be a little tight this time.’
I didn’t know how the criminals in those trucks would react when they learned that they couldn’t contact the guy I had just subdued anymore.
So, I had to take them out as quickly as possible and rescue the hostages.
Of course, I had no intention of using the Mind Sword like last time.
I had been told by Yeon Mi-rae, who had seen me suffer from the technique’s backlash last time, not to use it again, and….
‘More than that, I’ve realized that there are various other ways than the Mind Sword to secure the hostages’ safety while not traumatizing them at the same time.’
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T/N – Damn, how many techniques had he submitted to the system? Also, I did a double take at the fact that the MC ‘invented’ telepathy despite literal psychics existing, but I then read that the technique can also be used with other types of energy.
If you find any mistakes, feel free to point them out in the comments.
